


Dead Hearts

by raving_liberal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Kink (Kinda), Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Medical Horror, Pre-Slash, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Sam Winchester's Visions, Season/Series 02, Wincest Big Bang 2019 (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-27 16:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21122048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: A gory vision sends Sam and Dean to New York to investigate a series of bizarre murder-suicides among organ transplant recipients. They soon find themselves racing the clock to save a kidnapped girl before she becomes the next victim. Nightmares and the memory of Dean’s heartsblood on his lips haunt Sam through an investigation that puts the brothers on the trail of an ancient Norse legend.





	Dead Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork by kuwlshadow, who was incredibly patient with me as I worked on this fic oh so slowly! You can find her master post of artwork [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140987) or [on LJ](https://kuwlshadow.livejournal.com/106752.html). 
> 
> Edited by david of oz, who is the very best!
> 
> Additional artwork commissioned from [purgatory-jar](https://purgatory-jar.tumblr.com/) who is quite literally the awesomest.

_A stocky, dark-haired man in a doctor’s white coat holds a pulsing heart in his gloved hands. Below his hands, the pale lifeless body of a younger man lies on a surgical table, chest cracked and spread with retractors. With each beat, the heart pumps black ichor onto the doctor’s latex gloves, slowly dripping between his fingers. He turns away from the table with the young man’s empty husk on it, toward a second table, this one with a teenage girl strapped to it, intubated, but awake, eyes wide and terrified. Tears roll down her cheeks in time to the foul heart’s beat. Light glints off a nametag pinned to the coat, the words partially visible—Dr. Ramirez, NYU Lang—as the doctor reverently places the beating heart into a stainless steel pan next to the surgical table and picks up a scalpel, muttering something too quietly to be heard. The girl’s screams are stifled by the tube in her throat as the doctor begins to cut into—_

“Sam? Sammy. You okay, man?”

Sam’s head pounds as he jerks back into awareness in the Impala’s passenger seat, the lingering sights, sounds, and smells of the vision making him gag. He presses the back of one fist to his mouth as he swallows, forcing the bile back down into his stomach. He knows he’s shaking, and he can feel Dean’s worried eyes searching his face instead of watching the road, impatient for information Sam isn’t ready to give yet. He hates this hanging between them, the equal mix of menace and functionality in the visions, what they might mean about him, what Dean might think of him.

“I’m fine,” Sam says. He rubs his temples with his thumb and forefinger, making slow circles that he times with his equally slow deep breaths. 

“A vision?” Dean asks. He knows it is, though, and the slight question mark at the end is a courtesy to Sam more than it is an indication of a real question. 

Sam nods. “Yeah.”

“Bad one?” Dean asks, a genuine question this time. He glances between the road and Sam’s face like he’s afraid to commit too much to either for fear of missing something important on the other. 

“Yeah,” Sam says quietly. A new wave of nausea passes through him as he remembers the fear in the girl’s eyes and the raw, meaty smell in the room. 

“There somewhere we need to be?” 

Sam nods again. “New York. I’m not sure exactly where, though.”

“You get a name or anything?”

“Dr. Ramirez. I caught part of his name tag. It said ‘NYU Lang’, but that’s all I could see before…” Sam’s voice fades out. He hates this part, having to recount what he’s seen, trying to find the words to describe something that should be indescribable. Dean’s already nodding, though, and exiting off the southbound Ohio state route they’ve been on for the last hour, redirecting them towards the northeast and New York. 

“We’ll stop for food at the state line, let you get on your laptop and figure out where in New York we’re heading,” Dean says. 

Sam musters up a weak smile for his brother. “Thanks.”

“Any time, Sammy.” 

Not pestering Sam to death about his visions is out of character for Dean, but maybe he can sense how rough this one was for Sam. Whatever the reason, Sam appreciates the quiet as he rests his forehead against the cool window glass and watches the cornfields roll by outside. The sun begins to drop below the horizon, tingeing the green corn leaves coral and lavender as the sky changes color. The car is slightly too warm, and Sam drowses as Dean hums along to Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” off-key and familiar. 

Sam must doze off, because when he opens his eyes, they’re pulling into a roughly-paved blacktop lot in front of Dean’s usual seedy looking brand of diner. An elderly station wagon, an 18-wheeler parked under the flickering halogen street lamp, and a bicycle leaning against the front windows are the only other vehicles in the lot. Sam stretches, the vertebrae in his neck popping with an audible _crack_. Dean parks the Impala two spaces down from the station wagon and glances over at Sam, one eyebrow cocked.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean says. 

Sam tries and fails to stifle a yawn. “Where are we?”

“Rochester.”

Sam sits bolt upright in alarm. “_New York?_”

“Pennsylvania,” Dean says, shaking his head. “You weren’t out that long. We’re barely out of Ohio.”

“Oh. Good,” Sam says. “Are we eating here?”

“Sign says they’ve got WiFi,” Dean says, indicating the sticker on the diner’s glass front door. 

“Yeah, okay.” Sam stretches again, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up, before grabbing his laptop. He follows a few steps behind Dean, feeling like he’s walking on sea legs. The asphalt billows gently underneath his feet. His headache presses against the backs of his eyes. 

The waitress looks like every older woman working the night shift in a diner, wary and weary with the facade of a warm, welcoming smile pasted on top. She seats them in the booth closest to the kitchen. The only other patron hunches over his coffee cup at the counter; his stained mesh cap suggests he’s the driver of the 18-wheeler. 

They order coffee, then Dean makes a show of looking through the menu, a laminated single-vertical-fold affair that probably doesn’t warrant the attention Dean is giving it. Sam gives his own menu a cursory glance, locating the limited salad options: house or caesar, with or without grilled chicken. Sam orders the caesar with grilled chicken, dressing on the side. Dean orders a bacon cheeseburger with chili-cheese fries and a slice of apple pie. 

Sam boots up his laptop as the waitress leaves the table, keeping enough attention on his cup of coffee that Dean can’t pour any salt into it, since he’s about due for a prank on the usual Dean Winchester timeline of poor behavior. He pulls up his browser and searches for ‘Ramirez NYU Lang’. 

“Doctor Calvin Ramirez is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Langone Hospital in Brooklyn,” Sam says as he reads through the hits. “And get this… he’s started consulting at the ACCEPT Research Group clinic.”

“So?” Dean asks.

“So the ACCEPT Research Group helps expedite organ transplants,” Sam says. “In the vision, I saw Dr. Ramirez transplanting a heart filled with black goo from a dead man into a teenage girl.”

Dean grimaces over his mug of coffee. “Well, that’s gross.”

“They were in what looked like a medical clinic.”

“This Ramirez guy is murdering people and moving their hearts around?” Dean says. “That’s messed up.”

Sam keeps scrolling down the page of search results, frowning as he reads another headline. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Dr. Ramirez was a transplant recipient himself,” Sam says, clicking on the link skimming the article. “He had acute lymphocytic leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant. You want to guess who made it happen?”

“ACCEPT Research Group,” Dean says.

“Got it in one. And it gets weirder. The day after his transplant, his entire apartment building burned to the ground,” Sam says. “The police think it was arson, but they don’t have any suspects.”

“Ramirez?” Dean asks.

Sam shrugs. “Recovering from a transplant’s a pretty great alibi.”

“So what are we thinking? Did the transplants come from a dead serial killer or something?”

Sam shakes his head. “That’s the thing. Bone marrow usually comes from living donors, not dead ones.”

“Huh,” Dean says. The corners of his eyes crimp as he frowns down at his empty coffee cup. “I mean, it’s weird, yeah, but is it our kind of weird?”

“He’s definitely the guy from my vision,” Sam says. 

Dean sighs. “Yeah, alright. So, Brooklyn?”

“Brooklyn,” Sam agrees. 

“I hate driving in New York City,” Dean grumbles. “Parking spaces all too small for my baby.”

“I think you’ll both survive,” Sam says. The waitress approaches their booth with their plates, which puts a pin in the conversation while Sam picks stale croutons out of his salad and Dean starts eating with both hands, burger in the right and fries with the left. 

When the waitress is back behind the counter, refilling trucker-cap’s coffee, Dean leans in and asks, through a mouth of chili-cheese fries, “There been any other weird transplant-related stuff in the city?”

“There must be dozens of transplants happening every day in the city,” Sam says, returning his attention to his laptop and typing in a few more keywords for a new search, skimming the article headlines as he scrolls. “Lots of perfectly normal medical things could look weird if you— oh.” 

“Found something?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Sam says. “Buddy Lansing bludgeoned his partner of forty years and their two dogs to death four days after receiving a liver transplant.”

“That’s pretty weird,” Dean says. “We should start with this guy.”

Sam swallows a wave of revulsion as he keeps reading. “Yeah, don’t think that’s gonna happen. Apparently he tore open his surgical incision with a kitchen knife. He had the liver halfway out before he died from blood loss.”

Dean turns slightly green and puts down the rest of his burger. “The article say anything about the ACCEPT place?” Sam shakes his head. “We should start with the doctor, check his office since his place burned down, then visit the M.E.’s office to get a look at Buddy’s body.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, scanning his search results again. “Whoa.”

“Another one?”

“Yeah. A guy named Jeon Kyung-Soo pushed a woman onto the tracks at the Morgan Avenue subway station, then fell in after her. They were both struck and killed by a train.”

Dean _tsks_ softly. “Let me guess: Jeon Kyung-Soo had recently had a transplant?”

“He was returning home after a kidney transplant,” Sam confirms. 

“I’m definitely getting a ‘serial killer’s haunted organs’ vibe on this one,” Dean says. 

“It’s possible, I guess,” Sam says.

“Could be a demon, too, or witches,” Dean says. “_Fuck_, I hate witches.”

Sam laughs as he packs up his laptop. “Yeah, I know you do.”

“It’s probably witches. It’s _always_ goddamn witches,” Dean mutters. He pulls out a wad of bills and slaps them onto the table next to his unfinished burger. “Let’s hit the road.”

Sam offers to drive the next leg and is summarily shot down, so he settles against the passenger side window and lets the rumble of the Impala’s engine rock him into an uneasy sleep. He dreams. 

_A pair of hands tenderly cradle a pulsing heart, raw and deep purple. As the camera in his dream pans out, Sam sees the hands are his father’s, large and calloused, the dusting of dark hair on his knuckles matted with black blood. John stares down at the heart like it’s precious, like it’s his own newborn son, then he looks up to meet Sam’s gaze. John’s eyes are a bilious, marbled yellow. He lifts the heart up to his lips and takes a huge bite, teeth tearing easily through the fibrous muscle. Black fluid drips from his hands and his mouth. It drips into the open chest cavity of Dean’s body, spread out on a surgical table between John and Sam. John holds the heart up to Sam, an offering, and Sam leans forward to take bite after bite, unable to stop himself, until he has consumed it entirely. With Dean’s blood salty-hot across his tongue, Sam screams._

Dean’s worried “Sammy!” and gentle shake of Sam’s shoulder wakes him. Sam’s heart is pounding, and he’s covered in sweat. 

“Shit,” Sam pants. “Shit, shit.” 

“Vision?” Dean asks.

“Nightmare,” Sam says.

“Bad?”

“Yeah.”

Dean’s hand is still on Sam’s shoulder, heavy and comforting and frightening. “You need to talk about it?”

Sam shakes his head violently. “No. God.”

The Impala isn’t moving, Sam realizes. They’re parked on the side of the road, the sky a soft pink promise of an impending sunrise. Dean looks rumpled and exhausted. He let Sam sleep for hours while he drove through the night, and in thanks, Sam ate his heart. Sam’s tongue darts out to touch his lips, chasing the memory of the taste. When he realizes what he’s doing, nausea wrenches through him. 

“Shit,” Sam says again, flinging open the passenger door and scrambling out to his knees to vomit into the roadside dust. Part of him expects black blood, maybe heart tissue, but it’s just bile, thin and yellow, and a few remnants of the sad caesar salad from the diner. He doesn’t hear Dean get out of the Impala, but he must, because his hand sweeps Sam’s sweaty hair off his forehead, letting the cool morning breeze touch it. 

“Hey, you okay, man?” Dean asks. Sam shakes his head and squeezes his eyes closed, taking slow breaths through his nose to combat the nausea. “What was it?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Sam says quietly. “Please.”

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean says. He lets out a soft sigh as he ruffles Sam’s hair and then presses a cold bottle of water—he must have fished it out of the cooler—against the back of Sam’s neck. 

“Thanks,” Sam says.

“It’s nothing,” Dean says. 

“It’s not nothing to me,” Sam counters.

Dean must shrug, because the water bottle jostles a little against Sam’s neck. “Well, yeah, but you’ve always been dramatic like that.” His tone sounds too light, forced joviality for Sam’s sake barely masking the worry. “C’mon.”

Sam allows Dean to pull him back to his feet and accepts the water bottle when Dean hands it to him. He twists the cap off and fills his mouth with clean water, swishing it and spitting it out into the dirt. He rinses his mouth out a few more times before taking a long swallow of the remaining water. He can still taste Dean’s heart’s blood in his mouth, sweet and metallic. 

“You feel like driving for a little while?” Dean asks. “I could use a couple hours sleep.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam says. _Anything_, he thinks and doesn’t say, and _I’m dangerous, Dad told you I’m dangerous, please stop me before I hurt someone_, and _I ate your heart and it was so good_. He says none of it. He takes the keys from Dean, the silver bullet keychain flesh-warm, and he settles himself into the driver’s seat. 

The sun rises and Dean sleeps as Sam drives east across Pennsylvania. He keeps the radio low and lets the same tape loop over and over again, allowing road hypnosis to scrape his mind clean and empty. The early morning sunlight washes over Dean’s skin and turns his stubble golden. In daylight, Sam can let go of his dream, can chalk it up to the lingering imagery of his vision. 

When they stop for gas, Sam and Dean switch places, and they banter easily back and forth about the odds of witches versus serial killer organs. They float outrageous theories about werewolf hybrids and the Jersey Devil. They argue over where to stop for gas, where to stop to eat, and whether or not Dean should pull over so Sam can piss or whether Sam should have to hold it because ‘you should have gone before we left the diner’. 

It feels obscenely normal. 

Deeper into the afternoon, when the sun has passed its apex and reached the edge of the rear window, filling the car and making Dean squint against its brilliant reflection in the rearview mirror, Sam finally feels ready to talk. He clears his throat and drinks from the water bottle resting in the vee of his legs.

“Got something you need to say?” Dean asks, prescient enough that Sam sometimes wonders if he’s really the only Winchester cursed with psychic powers. Sam lets the question sit between them for a couple of miles while he formulates an answer that won’t lead to Dean putting a bullet in one or both of their heads on the gravel shoulder of this state route.

“Something about this case isn’t sitting right with me,” Sam says, finally.

“No shit, Sammy,” Dean says. “Buncha witches moving serial killer organs around? That’s fucked up, even for us.”

“It’s not witches,” Sam says, then, “but it’s not just that. Usually my visions have something to do with the yellow-eyed demon, but I can’t figure out the connection.”

“Serial killer made a deal with him, maybe?” 

“Maybe,” Sam says. “I don’t know, and not knowing worries me.”

“Worrying ain’t gonna get us there any faster,” Dean says, though he grips the steering wheel tighter and presses down on the Impala’s gas pedal, urging her to hurry up. Maybe worrying won’t expedite the drive, but Dean’s sheer force of will might.

“I’m…” Sam starts and stops before he can get anything else out.

“It’s alright,” Dean says in his calm-the-vic voice. “No rush.”

Sam’s bark of laughter feels dirty and bitter. “Feels like there’s a rush.”

Dean never looks away from the road. “So you need a few more miles to sort it out. So what? We’ve got plenty of time and plenty of miles.”

“_And miles to go before I sleep_,” Sam replies with another shaky laugh. Dean snorts.

“Sure, if you wanna get all poetic on me.”

Sam turns to look at his brother and his perfect movie star profile, backlit by the driver’s side window.“You know that poem?” He doesn’t mean to sound surprised.

“Sure,” Dean says, rolling his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “_The woods are lovely, dark and deep._ I’m not illiterate, you know.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Sam protests.

“Sure. But I’m just saying, I ain’t,” Dean says, nodding placidly.

“I know that, Dean.”

“_I have promises to keep_,” Dean quotes. “You know anybody knows more about keeping promises than me, Sammy?”

“Dean,” Sam says softly, imploringly.

“Hand me up another bottle of water?”

Sam does, twisting to reach over the seat and fish around in the green cooler, easily as old as Dean. As old as the Impala, maybe, or older still. It keeps the water plenty cold, 50 years old or not. He grabs a bottle and holds it out to Dean, whose fingertips graze Sam’s as he takes the water.

“Thanks,” Dean says. 

They fall into silence again, as easy as falling off a cliff. Sam can feel the ground rushing up to meet him. His mouth tastes like iron. Iron-y, he thinks. Irony. Is something in this ironic? He isn’t sure yet.

The night falls over them in a heavy black blanket before they roll into New York City. The Impala feels bigger and louder as they drive between the buildings, traffic slowed to a crawl.

“Fuckin’ hate this city,” Dean mutters, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“Just a few more blocks to the hotel,” Sam promises.

“Hotel later. I wanna get rolling on this thing,” Dean says.

“I guess the hotel can wait,” Sam says. “Start with Ramirez’s apartment?”

Dean nods. “Fuckin’ witches, man.”

“It’s not witches.”

“You say that now, but then tomorrow’s gonna be all hex bags and chicken feet and women with too much black eyeliner,” Dean says. 

“So, just a regular Dean Winchester Thursday night?” Sam can’t help but ask.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re fuckin’ hilarious, Sammy.”

God bless city planners, laying everything out on a grid. They visit the ruins of Ramirez’s apartment building in Brooklyn first, circling the burnt-out husk a few times before Dean finds a parking spot he likes. The whole building is taped off in yellow, but they duck under the tape, Dean’s EMF detector in hand and holy water at the ready. The meter gives the kind of spikes you’d expect in a city this size, crisscrossed with power lines, but nothing in the red, nothing to suspect ghost involvement. 

The doors to the building push open readily enough, but one look at the stairs tells them they aren’t making it past the lobby. If they could fly, maybe. If they could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Once upon a time, Sam thought Dean could. He’s older now and, if not wiser, at least awake to the simple truth that a good heart doesn’t automatically impart herculean abilities. Dean’s as grounded as Sam is, two flightless birds tucked inside the ribcage of a long-dead behemoth, with not so much as a whiff of sulfur to confirm they’re on the right trail.

“What do you think? Clinic next?” Dean asks. “Or the other two scenes, Jeon Kyung-Soo or… what’s the other one?”

“Lansing. Buddy Lansing,” Sam says. He frowns, wishing his psychic thing were something he could flip on and off. When he thinks about the clinic, he feels a surge of sickening dread. He tastes metal in his mouth, old pennies and fear. “The clinic seems like the rational choice, but I hate walking in blind.”

“You ain’t the only one,” Dean says. He tucks the EMF detector into his pocket with a look down at the gadget like it disappointed him.

“We could hit the morgue, take a look at the bodies,” Sam suggests. 

Dean nods. “Get the lay of the land.”

Sam has to make about a dozen calls before they locate the bodies, one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens. Jeon Kyung-Soo’s cadaver may give them enough information to move forward on, so they get directions to that morgue and head that way. They don’t talk beyond Sam’s instructions of “left here” or “right in three blocks.” 

The M.E. isn’t on the premises when they get there—not shocking, given the hour—but her assistant, Tara, is more than willing to help Agents Barrett and Waters with anything they need. She runs off to fetch the autopsy results while Sam and Dean look at the body, which is a grisly mess after its run-in with the subway train. Sam looks for any obvious signs of demonic or ghostly possession while Dean gives Jeon’s body a pass with the EMF detector. They both come up with zilch.

“I’ve got the report,” Tara suddenly says from behind them, breathing hard like she really did run for it. She hands the folder to Dean, blushing when his fingers brush against hers. Sam breathes slowly through his nose and glances away. Tara doesn’t look at him, just at Dean, as she asks, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Sam focuses on the dead body while Dean flirts and teases his way in circles around Tara, getting her phone number in case he “has any more questions… or something else comes up.” Nothing Sam hasn’t patiently sat through his entire life, it feels like, though tonight it rubs him a little raw.

“Are you done picking up the medical examiner?” he forces out, glancing up from the body.

“_Assistant_ medical examiner,” Dean says, all sly grin and white teeth. “And yeah.”

“Good,” Sam says, pointedly looking back down at the remains. He slips on a pair of blue latex gloves and examines the twisted, tangled ruin of Jeon Kyung-Soo’s body more closely. Jeon’s lower abdomen surprisingly intact, save for the gaping incision down one side. Sam points to it. “There.”

“Think the sutures tore in the accident?” Dean asks.

“Maybe.” Sam slides two fingers into the incision. Dean goes greenish, swallowing back an obvious gag, turning his attention to Jeon’s file. 

“You going fishing for a reason?” Dean asks as he flips pages and Sam digs around inside Jeon’s abdomen.

“Buddy Lansing died removing his own liver. His _transplanted_ liver.”

“And you’re wondering if Jeon did the same to his brand new kidney? It tracks.”

Sam feels around a little more, frowning. “No kidney.”

“Huh. So, two for two on really, _really_ aggressively rejecting their transplants.”

Sam removes the gloves and chucks them in the trash. “Jeon’s could have been lost in the subway accident.”

“File doesn’t say. Hang on a sec,” Dean says, opening the morgue door and calling out, “Hey, Tara. You got a minute to answer a weird question?”

Tara hurries in a few moments later, face slightly flushed like she hadn’t expected to talk to Dean again so soon after giving him her number, but she straightens herself up and puts on a professional expression. “What can I help you with, Agents?”

“My partner and I were wondering if they found Mr. Jeon’s kidney,” Dean asks.

“You mean the donor kidney?” Tara asks. Dean nods. “What was left of it. It was several feet away from the rest of his body. The M.E. found nephritic tissue under his nails. It should be in the report. She thought he might have been bracing the incision when the train struck him. The whole thing is so strange.”

“Thank you again for your help,” Dean says to her. She smiles and ends up walking them up to the front. Dean gives her one more charming smile before he and Sam exit the building.

“Nephritic tissue. That’s kidney, right?” Dean asks Sam as they walk back to the Impala. 

“It is. So, you were right,” Sam tells Dean. “Two for two.”

“This just gets creepier and creepier,” Dean says. “Do you think we need to look at Lansing’s body?”

“I’m not sure it’s going to tell us anything that Jeon’s didn’t. No EMF, no ectoplasm, no sulfur. The M.E.’s report didn’t describe anything that sounds like a hex bag or a cursed object in his belongings.”

“Doesn’t mean we’re ruling out witches.”

Sam sighs. “We’re not ruling out witches, even though I don’t think it’s witches.”

“Bet you twenty bucks it’s witches,” Dean says.

“Bet _you_ twenty bucks that you’re—” Sam interrupts himself with a huge yawn.

“Whatever you say, Sandman. I say we find the hotel, grab a couple hours, and start with the transplant clinic bright and early tomorrow,” Dean says. 

Sam can’t bring himself to argue, because he’s exhausted from his uneasy sleep on the road, so they climb into the Impala and head to the hotel. The hotel itself is about on par with their usual shitholes, with only a single available at almost twice the price of their usual double, which makes Dean bitch and moan for a few minutes before handing over one of the cards that still has a decent amount of space on it. They get a rollaway cot, at least, which Sam generously volunteers to take, even though he knows he’ll be hanging halfway off it by morning. He half expects Dean to argue with him about it, but Dean falls face first onto the bed, boots still on, and is snoring within five minutes.

Sleep doesn’t come as quickly to Sam, tired as he is. He tries going over the details of the case in his head, but every time he thinks he’s starting to see a pattern, he flashes back to the nightmare from earlier, Dean’s heart between his teeth. Sam rolls over on the cot and pulls the thin pillow over his head. He tosses and turns, but sleep still doesn’t come, just the images from that nightmare mixed with those from his vision. 

When morning light filters in through the cheap blinds, Sam has slept maybe an hour total, all in ten to twenty minute intervals. His body aches from the poor fit of the cot, and an equally uncomfortable headache clamps his skull in its vice grips. He sits up, stretching until his back cracks and he feels some of his muscles start to loosen. Dean dozes on, still in the same prone position he hit the bed in. In sleep, his face is peaceful in a way he never looks awake. Sam wishes he could find a way to keep that peace for Dean, but Sam Winchester wasn’t built to bring anyone peace. 

On the bed, Dean stirs, snuffling into his pillow before lifting his head. He looks straight at Sam, making and holding eye contact for far too long. The moment stretches, Dean’s eyelashes catching the light as he stares at Sam. Sam’s heart starts pounding, and his mouth feels dry. Eventually, Dean blinks sleepily, the strange moment ending just like that.

“You look like shit, Sammy,” Dean announces as he sits up. 

“Thanks, ’cause you wake up looking like Miss September,” Sam says, which makes Dean snort.

“Come on, you know I’m more of a springtime gal,” Dean says. He runs a hand through his hair, then scrubs it over his face. He looks down at himself, seeming to only just realize he’d sacked out fully dressed, boots still on. He tugs on his flannel and sniffs it, grimacing. “I’mma tell you what. I’m gonna take a shower while you go get us some breakfast.”

“Sure,” Sam says, as Dean shuffles into the bathroom. Sam waits for the water to start before quickly changing clothes and running out to grab them both coffee and bagels from a place they’d passed a couple blocks down the previous night. By the time he gets back to the room, Dean is dressed in his fed suit. He takes one of the coffees from Sam with a look of supreme gratitude.

“Thanks. Shower’s yours,” Dean says. “Pressure’s shit, but it’s hot.”

Sam makes quick work of his shower—feels weird to linger this morning, for whatever reason—and the two of them are back in the Impala to head over to Queens by 7 am. Finding the clinic isn’t hard, but the six story building they park in front of doesn’t exactly look bustling. The clinic takes up the whole lower floor, with an entrance below street level. The sign over the door says ‘ACCEPT Research Group’ with posted hours that state they open at 6:30 am, but the door is locked. When Sam peers inside, the clinic is dark. 

Dean shrugs and breaks out the lockpick, quickly letting them into the building. Sam braces himself for the blare of an alarm, but the clinic stays silent. As they walk through a warren of halls, they realize the clinic is in total disarray, with papers and medical equipment strewn everywhere. In a small operating room in the back of the clinic, they find signs of a recent procedure: blood-soaked gauze pads and surgical equipment on the tray next to an operating table. The blood on the table itself is still tacky. The room smells strongly of blood and faintly of urine. 

“Are they doing the transplants _here_?” Dean asks. 

“They’re not supposed to be,” Sam says. “Clinics like this are for stuff like lab tests, post-transplant wound care. Outpatient treatments, not the actual transplants.”

“What the hell kind of place is this?” Dean mutters. 

The EMF detector doesn’t give them any more feedback than at any of the previous locations, and they don’t find any signs of demonic, ghostly, or any other blatantly supernatural activity. Flashlights in hand, they end up combing through the building room by room for several hours, pulling aside any files or paperwork that looks relevant. Sam keeps a close ear out, but nobody so much as rattles the front doors. As they make it to the back of the clinic, they find a walk-in refrigerated storage room. Sam and Dean look at each other and exchange grimaces. 

“Body in the freezer?” Dean asks.

Sam sighs. “There’s always a body in the freezer.”

Sure enough, there’s a body in the freezer. Her name tag identifies her as Dr. Liu. Cause of death is obviously the scalpel that’s been stabbed into her carotid artery. She looks like she’s been dead for a few days. 

“Did you see her in your vision?” Dean asks. Sam shakes his head.

“Just Ramirez.” 

“You think she got in Ramirez’s way?” 

“I think this whole thing is weird,” Sam says. He yawns. It makes his jaw pop, and he works it side to side for a second. “I have no clue what we’re even looking for.” 

“We should go through this paperwork and see what we can put together,” Dean suggests. “Maybe get you another coffee, tired boy.”

“Cot wasn’t great,” Sam says.

“We’ll swap out tonight,” Dean says. Sam gives him a small, grateful smile. 

As they’re heading out of the clinic, the nagging headache Sam had attributed to his insomnia suddenly flares up into the sharp pain of a vision. He staggers and falls to his knees. 

_Dr. Ramirez stands over the girl strapped to the surgical table, a pulsing heart upraised in his hands, the black blood dripping down onto her bare chest. She cries silently. The young man’s body lies discarded just out of frame. Dr. Ramirez places the heart in a stainless steel pan, setting it down carefully, like fine china or a baby bird. He picks up a scalpel. It catches the light. _

_He begins to softly chant, “Hana brenndu, þrisvar brenndu, þrisvar borna, oft, ósjaldan, þó hon enn lifir.”_

_He presses the scalpel to the girl’s sternum and makes a decisive downward slice. Blood wells up from the wound. Dr. Ramirez looks up from his work and makes eye contact with Sam. Sam tastes blood in his mouth. He tastes Dean’s blood. He licks his lips to chase the taste of it, and Dr. Ramirez smiles with bloody teeth._

“No!” Sam screams. “No!” He’s shaking. No, he’s being shaken, shaken by Dean, kneeling on the floor in front of him with one hand on each of Sam’s shoulders. Sam realizes his own hands are clenched into fists around the clinic paperwork. He lets the papers fall to the floor and grabs Dean into a hug.

“Hey, it’s okay, man, it’s okay,” Dean says, sounding startled. Hugging isn’t Sam’s usual post-vision behavior, but he’s relieved Dean hugs him back anyway, wrapping his arms tightly around Sam like he did when they were kids. “Hey, Sammy, it’s okay, it was just a vision, it’s fine.” 

Sam shakes his head, pressing his face to the side of Dean’s neck. He’s crying, he realizes, crying and trembling, and he still tastes the blood in his mouth. After a minute or so of hugging, Dean disentangles himself from Sam, holding him by the shoulders at arms’ length.

“What happened? What’d you see?” Dean asks.

“Nothing. I mean, it was the same, the same as the first one. The girl, he was killing the girl,” Sam says. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Dean assures him. 

“It’s really not,” Sam says. “Shit.”

Dean frowns. His eyes dart back and forth like he’s trying to read Sam’s face like one of the maps in their old atlas. Sam doesn’t dare look Dean in the eyes. He feels slightly nauseated.

“Okay, we’re getting out of here, for starters,” Dean says. “Get you some fresh air.”

Sam nods, gathering up the papers he dropped and then allowing Dean to lead him out of the clinic. Back in the Impala, Sam can finally get the trembling under control. He smooths the crumpled papers out on his lap, carefully avoiding looking at Dean.

“So,” Dean says.

“So?” Sam parrots. 

“So… you gonna tell me what’s going on?” Dean asks. “And don’t try to say it was just the girl. I’m uneducated, but I’m not _stupid_.”

“She looked thirteen, maybe fourteen. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t just having visions enough?” Sam asks. 

“Sure, but I’ve seen you after visions. This? Ain’t that.”

Sam sighs. “It… It was like the vision got mixed up with my nightmare.”

“The one from yesterday that upset you so bad?” Dean asks. Sam nods. “Well, you want to tell me what it was about?”

Sam shakes his head. “Not particularly.”

“What? What was so bad you can’t tell me?” Dean asks. 

“Nothing. It’s nothing. It was just a stupid dream.”

“Hey! Don’t pull that shit with me,” Dean says, suddenly sounding angry. “I’m not asking you to keep a detailed dream journal. I’m asking you to tell me about one dream that’s obviously got your head messed up.”

Sam lets out a shaky sigh. “It was about Dad. Kind of. He had yellow eyes.” Dean nods, but doesn’t add or ask anything, so Sam continues. “And you. I dreamed he cut out your heart, like Dr. Ramirez did to the man in my vision, like he’s going to do to that girl. He was holding your heart in his hands.”

“It makes sense you’d have nightmares about Dad. I have ’em, too, sometimes,” Dean says, but Sam shakes his head hard.

“The part with Dad wasn’t the worst part,” Sam says.

“So tell me the worst part, then,” Dean says.

Sam looks out the passenger side window at the people walking by. A mom with a stroller and a toddler on a leash. A group of teenagers laughing and shoving each other. An older man smoking a cigarillo. Two young women holding hands and smiling sappily at each other.

“He took a bite out of it,” Sam says.

“My heart?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Dean says. “Maybe it’s related to the vision. Maybe Dr. Ramirez is a werewolf, and we—”

“That’s not all of it,” Sam cuts in. “That’s not even the worst of it.”

“Then tell me the worst of it, Sammy, ’cause I’ve got no clue what’s happening here.”

“He held it out for me, and I… Dean, I took a bite, too.” Sam sucks air in through his nose to quell the nausea threatening to rise up. “I took more than just a bite. I ate it. I ate all of it.”

“Okay,” Dean says carefully.

“There’s something really wrong with me, Dean,” Sam says. Hot tears spring to his eyes, and he has to blink rapidly. 

“It was just a dream,” Dean says, though something in his tone sounds off.

“When I had the vision in the clinic, I tasted it again,” Sam admits. 

“Dream logic is fucked up, Sammy, and with this vision shit, it’s just got you all turned around.” He puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezes, but Sam shrugs it off. 

“Dean, you don’t understand!” Sam says. “I _liked_ it. It tasted good.”

“Ah,” Dean says softly. 

Sam sneaks a glance at him, but Dean’s face is unreadable. Dean starts the Impala, and anything else Sam was going to say is drowned out by the rumbling of the engine. They don’t speak to each other as Dean finds a diner, then circles a few times for a parking spot. They don’t speak to each other as the waitress inside seats them, though Dean does order them both coffees. They spread the paperwork from the clinic out on the table in silence, and when their coffee comes, they drink that in silence, too. As the minutes tick by, Sam accepts that they just aren’t talking about this right now, and turns his attention to the files, flipping through the pages for something that might give them a clue about where to go next. Across the table, Dean drinks his coffee and reads through his own stack of files, expression inscrutable. 

Sam highlights a few names and numbers that might be useful, but focusing on the words on the pages is difficult. His head still hurts, pressing against the backs of his eyes, and he can’t get the scene from the vision out of his head. Ramirez muttered something before he cut into the girl. What was it? 

“_Thisvar_? _Thrisvar_?” Sam says under his breath. “_Thrisvar_ something.”

“Hmm?” Dean says, looking up from his reading. His face still has that unreadable expression, closed off and tight. 

“Something Dr. Ramirez said in the vision. _Thrisvar brendu_? Norse, I think, so maybe _þrysvar_.” Sam frowns and opens his laptop. He only has to search for a few minutes to find what he’s looking for. 

“Found something?” Dean asks.

Sam nods. “It’s a verse from the Old Norse poem _Völuspá_, about a female mythological figure named Gullveig. _Þat man hon folkvíg/fyrst í heimi/er Gullveigu/geirum studdu/ok í höll Hárs/hana brenndu/þrisvar brenndu/þrisvar borna/oft, ósjaldan/þó hon enn lifir._”

“And for those of us who don’t speak Old Norse?”

“The war I remember, the first in the world, when the gods with spears, had smitten Gullveig and in the hall of Hor had burned her,” Sam reads from the online translation of _Völuspá_. “Three times burned, and three times born, Oft and again, yet ever she lives.” 

“Ever she lives, huh?” Dean says. Expression returns to his face as he focuses on the case again and not on the freaky shit Sam had told him. 

“And get this,” Sam continues, scrolling down a little. “The next verse calls her the ‘wide-seeing witch’ and that ‘to evil women, a joy she was’.” 

“Hot damn! Told you it was a witch!” Dean says, banging his hand on the table. Everyone else in the diner jumps at the sudden noise, but Dean just looks smug. 

“If it _is_ a witch, she would be incredibly ancient and powerful,” Sam says. “This poem dates back to the twelfth century at least, maybe as far back as the tenth.”

“Not the first ancient evil we’ve faced. Not the first witch, either.” Dean gestures at the waitress to come refill their coffees. Now that they’ve broken the silence, he seems back to his usual self. 

“Maybe,” Sam says. “One source says that Gullveig may be another name for the goddess Freya, or it may just be the name for a concept, like an embodiment of the idea of seeking wealth and fame.”

“So could be a witch, could be a goddess, could be Paris and Nicole.”

“That’s the only mention of Gullveig in any of the Poetic Edda, and there’s nothing on summoning her or killing her,” Sam says. 

“You keep seeing hearts, right?” Dean asks. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say we go for the heart.”

“I need to keep researching.”

“While you’re doing that, I’m gonna check out this other clinic that keeps cropping up in these files,” Dean says. 

Sam frowns and looks down at his own stack of paperwork. “Which clinic?”

“Flushing Clinical Research,” Dean says. “A lot of these patients were involved in clinical trials there. Looks like it’s all transplant related. Anti-rejection drugs, some sort of injections you get in advance that are supposed to make you a better candidate for transplant.”

“Flushing’s in Queens, too. We should both go.”

“Exactly,” Dean says. “It’s not far, so you stay here and research ways to break our witch’s heart, and I’ll go scope out the clinic.”

“Dean.”

“Sam.”

“We shouldn’t split up. What if Ramirez is there when you get there?” Sam asks.

“That’s why we’ve got phones, Sammy,” Dean says. “Keep looking through the files and see if you see the girl in there anywhere. One of us is bound to get lucky.”

Sam wants to ask when a Winchester ever got lucky without strings attached, but Dean is already out the door of the diner. Sam watches the Impala drive off before turning his attention back to the files with a sigh. He goes through every file on the table, but while they have several files on teenage girls needing transplants, the girl from his visions isn’t in the stack. He starts back through the paperwork again to keep his mind off of Dean going to the clinic alone just to get away from Sam and his weird heart-eating dreams. 

Four cups of coffee in, Sam’s headache is starting to ease off, though his anxiety has ramped up with each passing minute he doesn’t hear from Dean. He’s about to throw in the towel and call Dean when something in Dean’s stack of files catches his eye. Sam hadn’t really focused much on it because it had very little patient information, just a list of names and contact numbers, no pictures or ages. Now he realizes he’s looking at printouts of the New York organ transplant list. 

He starts going through the lists, and sure enough, he finds Jeon Kyung-Soo, then Calvin Ramirez, then Buddy Lansing. None of their names was near the top of their respective lists. Desperate people would join a clinical trial to decrease their odds of rejection, making it more likely they’d receive a transplant. Desperate people would even go to a clinic and have off-the-books organ transplants and not question the source.

If these men are on the list, so is Sam’s teenage girl, he’s sure. He finds the list of recipients in need of hearts, and he starts looking them up online. He doubts the girl he saw—thirteen or fourteen, black, trendy hairstyle—is named Floris Belchman or Agnes Lee-Ann Cuthbert, but he looks them up anyway to rule them out. After a half hour of searching, he’s been able to eliminate all the names but Janelle Mulroy and Krystal Dormer. No pictures online, but they’re both young teens, fourteen and fifteen respectively, and one of them, Janelle, lives in Queens.

Sam calls Dean. The phone rings. It rings. It rolls into voicemail. 

Sam calls again. Voicemail. Again, and again, and again. Voicemail.

Sam quickly looks up the address for Flushing Clinical Research, scoops up his laptop and the paperwork, slaps money onto the table, and runs out the door. He flags the first taxi that comes down the street, though ‘flagging’ might be a nice way to describe running into the street and frantically waving his arms. He hands a wad of bills up to the driver and asks him to hurry, and the driver obliges happily. 

The taxi lets Sam out right next to the Impala, a block down from the research center, so Sam grabs a machete. He shoves a silver knife into his boot and bottles of holy water into his pockets. He approaches Flushing Clinical Research carefully, but finds the door unlocked. Hoping he isn’t following Dean into a trap, Sam eases through the door as quietly as he can, then up a flight of stairs to the center’s office. From the hallway, he hears the faintest sound of voices and muffled crying. 

Everything in Sam screams for him to kick the door in and rush in guns blazing, but instead, he is careful, methodical. He edges the door open an inch at a time, his Taurus in one hand and the other ready to drop from the door to the machete at his waist at a second’s notice. Once he has the door open enough to see inside and confirm the lobby is empty, Sam slips into the office. He follows the sounds to the back of the research center.

Seeing a location in person that he has previously only seen in a vision is always disconcerting, but the scene Sam walks into is like someone took his vision and his nightmare and crammed them together into a single room. On a metal gurney against the far wall, Sam sees the body of a young man, his rib cage cracked open and gaping. Dr. Ramirez stands in the center of the room with the heart in his hand, black ichor dripping down, but instead of a single surgical table with a girl, he’s standing between two tables: on the left, a crying black teenager, and on the right, Dean. Both are shirtless and strapped to the tables. The girl has been intubated, but is clearly awake, while Dean looks unconscious. Sam thinks he sees a trickle of blood at Dean’s hairline. 

Sam crouches down low and stays against the wall. Dr. Ramirez, focused on the heart, begins reciting the _Völuspá_ verses about Gullveig to the heart as he sets it down onto a stainless steel tray. Sam stays low and creeps around the side of the room, ducking behind medical equipment, gurneys and instrument stands mostly, to get behind the doctor.

“Two options are better,” Dr. Ramirez says to the heart. “One of them will work. _Yet ever, she lives!_” 

He picks up the scalpel and looks first at the girl, then at Dean, as though weighing their comparative virtues. The girl stares desperately around the room, wild-eyed and struggling. When she spots Sam, her eyebrows rise. Sam puts a finger to his lips, tipping his head down at his gun and then at the doctor. She blinks furiously, and Sam figures it’s the closest thing to a nod she can make while restrained and intubated. 

Sam slinks closer as Dr. Ramirez picks up his scalpel, he turns towards Dean and touches the blade to his sternum just as Sam fires, emptying the clip into Ramirez’s torso. The doctor wheels on Sam, seemingly unphased by the shots, though blood pours down his already-stained lab coat from each exit wound. On the table behind Ramirez, Dean’s eyelids flutter open. 

Ramirez lunches himself at Sam with the scalpel raised, slicing across Sam’s forearm before he can get the machete out of his belt. He has height and reach on Ramirez, plus a longer blade, but Ramirez, unlike Sam, doesn’t seem to feel any pain. Sam circles around, because at least he can put himself between the doctor and Dean and the girl. Ramirez takes another swipe at Sam, going low this time, and Sam nearly takes off half of Ramirez’s arm with the machete. While Ramirez is awkwardly transferring his scalpel to his other hand, Sam uses the machete to cut the bindings holding Dean to the surgical table. 

Dean scrambles off the table, looking disoriented, but he still has enough of his wits or his instincts to go to the girl. Sam trades swipes with Ramirez, and Dean carefully pulls out the girl’s tube and undoes her bindings. Dean picks his discarded flannel up from the floor and drapes it over the girl, hurrying her to the doorway. Ramirez catches Sam in the thigh with his blade, slicing through denim and deep into the muscle, then carves a line across Sam’s stomach. Sam runs the machete straight through Ramirez, but that doesn’t make him stop. 

Sam’s leg buckles under him and he has a moment where, blood pouring from his thigh and running down his stomach, he thinks that if nothing else, he got Dean and the girl out. He saved Dean and the girl, and that’s something, that’s a noble way to go. Heroic, even. He goes down to one knee as his injured leg gives way. Ramirez dives in with the scalpel aimed at Sam’s throat—

And crumples to the ground like a marionette with cut strings, limp and lifeless. 

“What?” Sam says. “What happened?”

He looks behind him to see Dean standing there shirtless, holding the heart aloft in one hand, a knife stuck straight through it. Black blood oozes over his hand and slowly drips down his arm. Dean grins at Sam as he gives the knife a showy twist before yanking it sharply up, splitting the heart into pieces that fall to the floor with dull, meaty thuds. Dean wipes his hand on his jeans.

“Like I said, just go for the heart,” Dean says. 

Sam starts to laugh, a manic kind of laughter that he can’t control. Dean has a surgically straight cut directly over his sternum that’s steadily bleeding down his bare chest and stomach, and a knot coming up on his forehead where Sam noticed the trickle of blood earlier. Otherwise, though, Dean seems unharmed, and certainly in better shape than Sam, whose jeans are soaked through with blood on one leg and who can’t stop laughing.

“Take a breath, Sammy,” Dean says, stepping closer to Sam. “Just breathe.”

Sam can’t breathe. He can only laugh. When Dean gets close enough, Sam leans in, pressing his face against Dean’s stomach, laughing until tears stream down his face. Dean runs a hand through Sam’s hair, and Sam’s too far gone to even appreciate that it’s not the one still gummed with black ichor. 

“Hey, hey, it’s fine, it’s fine, Sammy,” Dean says. Sam nods against Dean’s stomach. Sam’s face is sticky now with sweat and tears, but he’s still shaking with laughter. Dean takes a step away from Sam, but only enough to crouch down next to him and start applying pressure on Sam’s leg wound. “I think the blood loss is making you loopy.”

Dean ends up using his belt as a tourniquet, and together, he and the girl wearing Dean’s flannel shirt get Sam down the stairs and into the Impala. They wait until they hear the ambulance sirens just around the corner, can see the red and white lights bouncing off the buildings, then Dean kisses the girl gently on the forehead and joins Sam in the Impala. They pull away shortly before the ambulance pulls up. Sam can see the girl waving at them in the side view mirror.

“So, you were right that we shouldn’t split up,” Dean concedes, driving faster than is probably safe given they’re in a full-size Impala in New York City and he likely has head trauma.

“You were right about the heart,” Sam says. His face still feels sticky. He wipes at it with the back of his hand. His hand comes away smeared red. Not just sweat and tears, then. The blood on Dean’s stomach must have transferred to Sam’s face. He licks his lips and tastes iron. He licks them again, until they’re clean, and closes his eyes. 

Sam is in and out for the next hour or so. He doesn’t remember Dean getting him up to the room, but when Sam finally rouses, the cuts on his thigh, arms, and stomach have been cleaned, stitched, and bandaged, and he’s sprawled on the bed in nothing but boxers, taking up about eighty percent of the mattress. Dean is curled up in the remaining twenty percent of space, his head to Sam’s feet, still shirtless, but now with butterfly strips across the cut on his chest. Now that the wound is no longer bleeding, Sam can see how small it is. 

His first thought is to lick it. Luckily, he’s tired and heavy-limbed enough to not follow up on that thought. His shifting and moving wakes Dean, who does his usual not-jolted-awake snuffle, though into Sam’s foot instead of a pillow. 

“Sammy?” Dean mumbles. “Y’okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Sam says, then amends, “I’m okay. I’ll _be_ okay.”

“Good,” Dean says, patting Sam’s shin as he rights himself. “So what the hell was that back there?”

Sam thinks about the way Dean’s blood tasted on his lips. “Uh. What was what back there?”

“Doctor Frankenstein and his ancient Norse monster heart. What the hell else would I mean?” 

“Oh. Yeah. Right, sorry. Still a little fuzzy.”

Dean pats Sam’s shin again. “Yeah, you lost an awful lot of blood. I just wondered if you have any idea what the hell kind of thing it was I just killed.”

“I think it was a heart,” Sam says.

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, but, like, what the _fuck_? That was one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever seen!” Dean says. “Like, I get he wanted to put the monster heart into somebody, that part was clear enough, but what about the rest of it? The other transplants. Jeon and the subway? ‘Fava beans and a nice chianti’ guy?”

“I was kind of hoping you got a supervillain monologue, because I have no clue,” Sam says.

“If he was monologuing, he was doing it in Norwegian,” Dean says.

“Norse.”

“Whatever. Like you know. You’re fuzzy. You’ve lost an awful lot of blood.”

“Maybe Bobby would know,” Sam says. “We could visit Bobby.”

“Yeah, we haven’t seen Bobby in a minute, and you could use a place to rest up,” Dean says.

“’Cause I lost a lot of blood.”

“Yup, you sure did, kiddo.”

“My leg hurts,” Sam says. closing his eyes. 

The mattress shifts, and Dean presses two pills into Sam’s palm before getting up. Sam hears him rifling through one of the bags, then a room temperature bottle gets put in Sam’s other hand. Sam lifts his head enough to swallow the pills and drink the water, before closing his eyes again. He loses track of time listening to Dean move around the room quietly, probably packing them up, and eventually the pain meds kick in. Sam drifts a little in the soft narcotic glow. 

“You comfortable enough to make it down to the car?” Dean asks. 

Sam manages a “Mmhmm” and actually does make it down to the car without a particularly clear idea of how he got there. He leans against the window and closes his eyes. When he feels Dean buckling his lap belt, he reaches for Dean’s hand and holds it in his own for a second.

“I tasted your heart,” Sam says, his voice dreamy and soft. 

“Yeah. You and your freaky-ass dreams,” Dean says.

“For real, I did,” Sam says. “I did for real.”

“Yeah,” Dean says softly. He worms his hand out of Sam’s and ruffles his hair gently before starting the Impala. “Get some sleep Sammy.”

Sam nods and presses his face against the cool window glass. The Impala’s engine rumbles and vibrates through his skin and muscles, through his bones, into his blood, into his cells. Dean pulls away from the curb and points them west. 

In his sleep, Sam licks his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on a [case](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/277990/Dead-Hearts) I wrote for Chill 3rd edition (an investigative horror tabletop roleyplaying game), though with some fairly significant changes.


End file.
